Three Things John Winchester Never Did
by Cathryn
Summary: Full title: Three Things John Winchester Never Did With His Sons. Does what it says on the tin. Genfic. Warnings for AU and character death.


Warnings: AU, character death.

Disclaimer: Kripke created _Supernatural_. I'm just having some non-profit fun.

Spoilers: "Dead Man's Blood," "In My Time of Dying."

1.

"Hey. Dad."

John glances up at Dean's tone, the careful, tentative one he uses when he's not sure his father wants to hear what he has to say. "Yes?" He matches the tone with his own look, the then-think-hard-before-you-answer look.

Dean plows ahead. "Sam's graduating this month. This weekend. Saturday."

John knows that. He's kept close track of Sam these last four years. He knows every class, every grade, every party, and he certainly knows when his son is graduating. Dean doesn't have to tell him that. "Yes," he says again, telling Dean with his brevity to explain why he's bringing up the obvious.

"We should go."

This look is cool. "I doubt we'd be welcome." He hasn't spoken to Sam once in those four years. Sam is probably aware that he's been around Stanford more times than he can count, because John Winchester didn't raise stupid children, but he's never so much as called to ask about it. Dean has been in touch with Sam a few times; John's never asked and Dean's never said, but judging from the extra violence that showed up in the hunts following those occasions, they didn't go well.

"Dad, come on. He's valedictorian. Don't you wanna see that? Aren't you sick of skulking around under his window like you've got no right to care what he does?"

"Of icourse/i I want to see that!" John's voice is sharp with anger, but Dean doesn't flinch. "But if Sammy wanted us there, he would have invited us."

"Not if he didn't think we'd show. And why should he? You've never even _tried _to talk to him -"

"It goes both ways, Dean. It wouldn't kill him to pick up the phone."

"He probably thinks you'd hang up on him!" The surprise of it, Dean glaring at him in a way he hasn't done in so long that John can't even recall the last time, keeps him silent as Dean continues. "That 'it goes both ways' thing, Dad, that's crap. You're the adult here. He's still a kid. He thinks you hate him. If you thought your father hated you, would you call?"

John finds his voice and barks, "That's enough, Dean!" The words sting, because he can't deny it stated so baldly. He's steadfastly ignored the truth all this time, but Dean's bluntness after years of skirting the subject shocks him into looking at it. His foolish ultimatum, delivered in last-ditch panic, a desperate attempt to shock Sam out of his rebellion, followed by four years of silence - what else could Sam think?

Something of that must show in his face, because Dean leans forward, presses his advantage. "Come on, Dad, this is perfect. It's like a freaking movie or something. All you have to do to prove you don't hate him is _show up_. How hard is that?"

"It's not that simple. It's been a long time, he'll still be angry -"

"Yeah, but it's a start."

*

The ceremony is invitation-only, but for the Winchesters, that's child's play. John isn't the first sheepishly forgetful parent to slink up to the door and beg leniency. In the end, all they have to do is show IDs - which, ironically, are forged, since neither of them has spent much time at the DMV lately - and they're ushered in with a smile to choice seats automatically reserved for the valedictorian's family.

John has long been the seat-in-the-back sort. He feels uncomfortably conspicuous and doesn't like having so much space at his back. He can't watch the room from the front row.

Dean, on the other hand, is thrilled. "He'll definitely see us from here. Which," he adds with a glance at John, forestalling his response, "is kinda the point."

John can only nod in acknowledgement.

The graduates file onstage, the boys in deep cardinal red gowns and the girls in white. John picks Sam out of the group immediately, and smiles a little to himself at the nervous look on his face. He hopes that his son won't be kept in suspense for too long.

Dean's a mile ahead of him, flipping through the program. "God, there are like a hundred speeches in here and Sam's last," he grumbles quietly. "Wake me up when it's his turn, okay?"

John swallows a laugh and tells Dean not to embarrass his brother. "'Course not," Dean mutters, sitting up straighter.

John isn't sure why Sam doesn't spot them sooner. Nerves, maybe, or the way the lighting on the stage is set up, or maybe he's learned not to see what he doesn't expect. Whatever it is, John watches Sam through all the speeches preceding his, but Sam's eyes don't light on him or Dean once.

Finally, Sam is introduced. Dean gives a faint sigh of relief next to John as Sam walks solemnly up to the podium, placing his hands on it just so. He looks around the room like a trained speaker, someone who's had it pounded into his head to make eye contact throughout the crowd when he speaks, and takes a breath to begin.

And then, finally, he sees them. His eyes widen and the words die in his throat. Dean gives him a cheeky little wave, but Sam's gaze is squarely on John. John nods to him once, greeting and encouragement; then, without realizing it was going to happen, he smiles, overwhelmed by the fact that he is looking into his youngest son's eyes for the first time in four years.

Sam relaxes visibly and smiles back. "Hi, Dad. Hi, Dean." The crowd laughs indulgently and Sam launches into his speech. His eyes stay on his family the whole time.

Dean was right. This is a start.

**********

2.

John keeps vigil in Dean's room for hours, brushing off half-hearted attempts by the staff to get him back to his own room. As long as his son lies comatose in that bed, John has very little interest in his own well-being. The fact that they don't try all that hard to shift him, just the occasional mention that getting some rest would do him good, speaks volumes. None of them wants to come between father and son in these few last precious hours.

Sam sits with him too. Mostly, anyway, his fear manifesting itself as restlessness as he gets up to pace or get a coffee or visit the vending machine two or three times an hour. John watches him get up and down over and over for the better part of three hours, then finally says wearily,

"You're making me dizzy, Sam. Can't you hold still for twenty minutes?"

Sam shoots him a startled look; there's an edge of anger in it as there is so often when Sam looks at him, but he reins it back. Not in here. "Sorry. I didn't notice."

John nods and looks back at Dean.

Sam stays where he is for nearly forty minutes. He fidgets, which is worse and crawls under John's skin like an itch, but John doesn't say anything this time. He won't start an argument with Sam, not now and not over something so petty.

"Dad," Sam says finally. "I have an idea. I," He pauses. "It's probably stupid, but, it might work." He starts to stand.

"Sam -" John begins, but Sam cuts him off.

"I'm not gonna do anything dumb, Dad, except probably waste twenty bucks. I'll be back in a little while." He gives John a thin, pinched smile. "Don't let Dean go anywhere."

*

Sam's errand takes him about half an hour. Dean doesn't go anywhere. While he sits alone with his son, words bubble up in John's mind, words of love and pride and all the things he's so much more at home expressing with actions rather than speeches. If ever there was a time for speeches, it's now, the last time he'll ever be alone with Dean, and he knows he can find the words once he gets started, can tell Dean how indescribably proud he is, how he knows he could and should have showed it more often, how he would have followed Mary into death years ago without Dean and Sam to keep him tethered to reality.

But what's the point? Dean can't hear him. Saying those things now would be nothing but a feeble attempt to salve his own conscience. So John holds his tongue until Sam gets back.

Then he has to break his silence. "Sam. A Ouija board?"

Sam doesn't look up from tearing the shrinkwrap off the box and setting up the board and planchette. "Come on, Dad, you're not seriously gonna give me the skeptic's routine, are you?"

"He's not _dead _yet, Sam." He spits the words out, voice rising louder than he'd intended. Sam looks up, stricken. It's the first time either of them has said it aloud. John glances away. "Sorry, Sammy," he says quietly.

"I know, but. There's - something in here, Dad. I keep . . . feeling it, on and off. I think it's Dean."

That is possible, John thinks. It wouldn't be the first time a traumatized coma patient was flung out of his body. And Dean would have a better handle on the situation than most people. Would be trying to get their attention. "Could be," he allows. "Plenty of people have died in here, though."

Sam nods at the unspoken warning. "I'll be careful," he says, and settles in on the floor, resting his fingertips on the planchette. He takes a deep breath, then asks softly, "Dean, are you there?"

Nothing happens for a moment. Then, just as Sam's shoulders are beginning to droop, the planchette starts to move. He sits up straight, and John leans forward. Both of them watch the little piece of plastic intently as it slides up toward the top of the board.

YES

It pauses, then begins to spell something out.

F-R-E-A-K.

Sam laughs, a great explosion of relief that covers John's own startled chuckle. "What? Why am I a freak?"

_Ouija? _it spells. _Seriously?_ John keeps smiling, widely. It's definitely Dean.

"Hey, I had to improvise, you know," Sam says with false indignation, still smiling himself.

The planchette remains still. Sam glances up at his father in confusion. John is stumped too for a moment, then realizes. "Questions. He can only answer if you ask him questions. That's how these things work."

"Oh. Right." Sam looks back at the board and his expression sobers. "Dean? Are . . . are you okay?"

_Yes_.

John's not the psychic one, but he can feel the hesitation in the air. He knows what Dean isn't saying, but he speaks to Sam anyway, gruffly. "Ask him."

Sam looks up at him for a long moment, pain writ large on his expressive face, before he turns to the board. "Are you." He swallows hard. "Are you coming back?"

Long pause, then the planchette begins to move slowly. John can see the look on Dean's face, closed-off agony, as clearly as if his son really were sitting in front of them instead of lying on that bed.

_No. Reaper waiting. It's ok. I'm ready. Just saying goodbye._

Sam's voice is choked. "Dean, no. No."

John moves then, stiffly levering himself to the floor next to Sam. He puts a hand on Sam's shoulder, then looks at the board. He can't quite bring himself to look at the empty space across from them where Dean's near-spirit must be sitting.

"It's all right, Dean," he says roughly. "If you're ready, then you go. You've more than earned a peaceful passing." He squeezes Sam's shoulder in warning, don't make this any harder on Dean than it already has to be, but Sam is nodding in the corner of his vision.

"Dad's right. I'm sorry. We lo - you know we love you, right?"

_Yes_. Pause. _Bitch_.

Sam sniffles and laughs, choked with tears. "Jerk."

"Boys," John murmurs automatically, then stiffens, the familiarity of the reproval hurting far more than anything the board could possibly pass on to them. He does look up then, into space at about where Dean's eyes should be. "I'm proud of you, Dean," he says simply.

"Got that?" Sam asks softly, to let Dean answer.

There is a long pause, then - _Yes. Thank you. Goodbye._

Sam takes his hands from the planchette and presses them over his face as he begins to sob. John pushes the board out of sight under the bed and wraps his boy up tight against him as the heart monitor stops beeping and the flatline alarm sounds.

**********

3.

It takes three days too long to get to Elkins's cabin, because all the knowhow in the world doesn't mean a damn thing when John's truck breaks down fifty miles from the nearest replacement part. When he does get there and the Colt is gone, he swears a blue streak because he's not the only hunter who would have been here by now, to go through Elkins's place for clues or confirmation, and can't be the only one who knows what that gun was.

He's not too preoccupied to hear footsteps in the woods outside the cabin, though. He gets his machete and searches for two hours, but finds nothing. He's thinking that whatever hunters have been through Manning weren't as thorough as they might have thought they were. He needs to look for the Colt. He needs to clean this town out. Vampires. Not as extinct as they were supposed to be. If he's lucky, maybe they knew what the Colt was, too.

When he gets back to his truck, there's a new message on his phone. Sam. He hesitates. He usually saves the messages from his sons for when it's quiet, between jobs or during downtime, when he's hit a dead end looking for the demon or just needs to wait, and this is anything but. He can't be distracted right now. They've proven time and again over these last few months that he raised them right, raised them strong, raised them to take care of each other no matter what and to find a way to see it through. They think they need him but they don't. They only need each other. And John needs to focus, on taking down vampires and finding the Colt. Whatever this is, no matter how dire it must seem for Sam to call him, it can wait. They can handle it.

But something tells him to listen to Sam's message now, so he does, and his heart almost stops beating.

"Dad. We're in Manning, Colorado, and, and something's wrong with Dean. I . . . the vampires aren't extinct. I don't know what to do, Dad. Please come. This one time, please. Please."

John is down the driveway and on the road before he even realizes he started the truck.

He finds their motel quickly, thanks to the Impala, which has grown more and more distinctive with every passing year. A good old-fashioned bribe gets the room number, and the lock is easy to pick. He pushes the door open slowly, gun drawn, praying that he'll find them asleep in their beds, or staring at him with confused surprise before Sam apologizes for worrying him and says that he panicked.

The message is almost two hours old now, though, and John knows he won't find any such thing.

"Dad." Sam is on the floor, pale, throat bloody, voice weak and rasping. John scarcely feels it as the color leaves his own face, lowering the gun - which is useless, anyway, if it's vampires, but he needed something and he can't hide the machete in his coat while he picks locks - and hurrying to his son's side.

He drops to his knees. "Sam, what happened?"

"Dean - Dad, they didn't kill him -" Sam's eyes suddenly flick past him and go wide. "Dad!"

John is already standing and spinning around the second Sam looks past him, and it's only reflex that keeps his fist moving through the air, because it's Dean leaping at him, snarling.

The punch misses as John stares at Dean. Then he's grabbed from behind in arms that feel like solid steel, and the pallor of Sam's face takes on new significance through the shock a split second before Dean knocks him out with one well-placed blow.

*

He doesn't open his eyes when he wakes, taking stock through his other senses. He's on a bed, wrists circled with metal and arms pulled back above his head. Shackles. There are two bodies lying next to him, one on either side. Complete memory comes back then, snapping him to full consciousness and making his stomach heave.

"Sammy." Dean, on his right. The nausea gets worse, because Dean should sound different, should sound altered somehow, but his voice is the same as it's always been. "I think he's awake."

"Are you gonna call me Sammy for the rest of eternity now?"

"Yup. Come on, Dad. Give it up."

John wants nothing more in that moment than to keep his eyes closed for the rest of his life. And considering the trap he walked into, one only his sons could successfully ensnare him with, that's probably not such a tall order. But he steels himself and forces them open, staring at the ceiling.

"The fake unconsciousness thing doesn't really work with us," Sam explains. "We could hear your heartbeat picking back up." His voice is the same, too. Just like it was in that message, minus the terror and pleading that goes right to a parent's nervous system and knocks out the part of the brain that sees a fishy situation from a mile off.

"Sorry about the ambush," Dean says. "We wanted you to stick around long enough to hear us out, and we didn't really think you'd do that on your own."

In the back of John's mind, the hunter's instinct kicks into gear. Sort through information. Gather more. Respond accordingly. Push the emotions aside. They only get in the way. Do the job. He welcomes it and lets it take over, grateful, knowing it won't last for long, that it will disappear the moment he has to look either of them in the eye.

"What do you mean, hear you out? What's there to hear?"

Dean sits up, shifts into John's line of sight, forces John to see him. He looks almost the same, pale, but still Dean, no subtle monstrous twist to his features or supercilious smirk sparking in his green eyes. John feels the bottom drop out, and he knows then that even if he somehow gets the chance, which he won't, his boys know him too well, but if he does, he still won't be walking out of this room alive. None of the reading mentioned this, that the worst thing about vampires isn't the instinctive thirst for blood, it's that they are still who they were before the change. This isn't a monster wearing his son's body. It is his son, only now his son will be hunting people.

"When I woke up," Dean is saying, "practically the second I woke up, they were in my face about family and how I'd have one forever now if I'd just do 'em a favor. Sam got away, and they knew he'd be on guard, but they couldn't afford to blow town with a hunter knowing about 'em. So I said I'd see what I could do." He looks across John at Sam, and John follows his gaze automatically. Sam is listening to his brother with a faint smile, propped up on his elbow. He looks at John with normal hazel eyes. John flinches and Sam's smile disappears.

"They wanted him to kill me," he explains quietly. He looks back up at Dean and John can breathe again. "And I did not fall for the 'oh god help me' routine, man, I _knew _you were a vampire."

"Yeah, you keep tellin' yourself that," Dean says dismissively, like any one of a thousand arguments they've had a thousand times already. John's throat tightens and he forces himself to look back at Dean. To engage in the conversation before he falls apart. "But you didn't kill him."

"Of course I didn't!" Dean says, stiffening indignantly. "Dad, you know me better than that." He does smirk then, still pure Dean. "But those vampires didn't. They thought I wanted their crappy, creepy family. So I changed Sam, brought him dinner, took him back to the nest, and we wiped the bastards out. They never saw it coming."

"You - ?" That can't be right. They might still be Dean and Sam, but they're not human anymore, that part of them is _gone_.

"It was great," Sam enthuses. "Easiest fight ever. Dad, it was like twenty of them and two of us and it was still easier than any of the other hunts we've ever been on."

"Hunts - ?" John is floundering, too many shocks to the system at once. They're _vampires_, driven by bloodlust, have him chained up for the next meal _(iftheywouldpleasegodjustgetitoverwith)_ - and they're talking about hunting?

"Yeah!" Dean is grinning, sharing in his brother's excitement. "Can you imagine how fast we could take down, like, a werewolf or a wendigo now? Man, they won't even see us coming!"

This time, John doesn't even try to speak. He just stares at Dean, waiting for the punchline. The bright expression flows off Dean's face, melts into confusion. No. Not confusion. It's an are-we-going-to-get-in-trouble-for-this look, like he's ten years old and suddenly wondering if his surprise might not just net him a spanking instead of a smile. His voice, when he speaks next, sounds young, too.

"Dad, don't you get it? We're better hunters now. And," he falters, "and we don't have to worry so much about - one of us getting killed."

Sam, in contrast, speaks with firm deliberation. "About _any _of us getting killed."

And John Winchester turns as pale as his sons are now as he finally understands.


End file.
